HUMANITARIAN workers and government officials have been accused of embezzling as much as $3.8m of international funds donated to combat Aids and malaria resulting in the Global Fund to Fight Aids TB and Malaria suspending all future assistance.

According to Global Fund to Fight Aids TB and Malaria spokesman Seth Faison, the agency is suspending aid to Nigeria’s Aids agency over evidence the money was stolen by its workers and consultants. He added that Nigeria’s government has promised to repay the money to the Geneva-based agency and to prosecute the suspects. 

A report by the fund’s inspector general says seven government workers and three consultants stole the money over five years between 2010 and 2014. It said the fraud continued because the National Agency for the Control of Aids did not have proper audits.

 According to the agency, he missing money is 95% of the amount budgeted to implement, administer and train users of a web-based reporting platform but a fraction of the $1.4bn the fund has spent in Nigeria. An Office of the Inspector General (OIG) audit of Global Fund grants in Nigeria has identified significant problems in procurement, supply chain, financial and program management.

Auditors found discrepancies of over $4m between drugs ordered and delivered, $20m paid to suppliers without confirmation of delivery, stock-outs of eight months for critical medicines and a total of $7.65m in unsupported expenditures. As a result, the Global Fund is reviewing corrective measures, particularly with regard to risk management, identified by the OIG as the root cause of many of the issues.

With more than $1.4bn invested since 2003, Nigeria represents the Global Fund’s largest portfolio. Programmes to date have contributed to 750,000 people living with HIV/Aids currently on antiretroviral therapy, 310,000 new smear-positive tuberculosis cases detected and treated and 93.4m insecticide-treated mosquito nets distributed to prevent the spread of malaria.

Regarding procurement, the OIG found that Principal Recipients, the National Agency for the Control of Aids and the National Malaria Elimination Program do not monitor the deliveries to the central medical store in Lagos of drugs arriving through the Global Fund’s pooled procurement mechanism. This resulted in discrepancies in antiretroviral drugs deliveries of $3.7m from 2013 to September 2015 and $500,000 in artemisinin-based combination therapy drugs.